You are browsing the archive for Ryan Anderson.
26 September 2008
Plumbing on Mars: HiRISE Reveals Groundwater Cracks
This image from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter, shows cracks in the rocks on Mars that once formed the underground plumbing through which groundwater traveled. Groundwater flow on Mars has been speculated for a long time, but it takes powerful cameras like HiRISE to actually find the evidence. These cracks resisted erosion because they were filled with minerals deposited by groundwater, so now we can see them …
24 September 2008
Rain on Mars?
Universe Today is reporting that scientists have found evidence of rainfall and stable surface water on Mars. Unfortunately, the paper is published in a journal that Cornell does not subscribe to, so all I have to go on is the press release and the abstract for the paper. Still, it doesn’t sound to me like there is anything really ground-breaking in this study. They are reporting evidence for fan-shaped delta …
Phoenix Self-Portrait
Check it out! Phoenix recently used its arm camera to take a photo of its mast cameras, just like a tourist taking a self-portrait with their digital camera held at arm’s length.
Low-Gravity Volcanoes
During my series of posts about volcanoes last month, a reader emailed me and asked what the effect of lower gravity would be on martian volcanoes, and I thought it was such a good question that I decided to answer it here! Most of my answer is based on a (rather large) review paper by Wilson and Head that is available here. One of the first effects of low gravity …
23 September 2008
More on Science Policy
Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy has some more detailed thoughts and comments about McCain and Obama’s answers to the ScienceDebate questions. I encourage you to go check them out!
22 September 2008
Opportunity on the Road Again
The Opportunity rover is out of Victoria crater and is on the road again. The destination? A huge 22km (13.7 mile) diameter crater, dubbed “Endeavor”, about 12 km to the southeast. Opportunity was designed to live for at least 90 martian days (sols) and drive about 800 m. Today is sol 1658 and Opportunity has so far driven about 12 km (11,797.91 meters, to be precise). It’s not certain that …
Vote on ScienceDebate Questions
Both Obama and McCain have answered the 14 questions posed by ScienceDebate 2008, and now the site has opened up the answers to comments from readers. So go and share your thoughts on the candidates’ science policies. They may not be having an actual debate, but we can!
21 September 2008
Carnival of Space #71
Ok, so I’m a little slow on the uptake this week, but the 71st Carnival of Space is online! Go and get your space fix!
19 September 2008
Dancing Dust!
Stuart Atkinson has a cool animation of dust grains moving around in Phoenix’s optical microscope. Unexpected, but way cool! Check it out!
